Clarkson Academy

Question from an emeriti who is part of the Clarkson Historical Society. They want to get a historic marker for the building and he's trying to verify dates. Did some poking around, Clarkson is not that well documented in general, and that academy in particular is a bit fugitive. Helen Hastings history of local schools has some info, and then NY Historic Newspapers etc. Have made some suggestions, offered to get together... Wish I knew more, there a connections between this academy and our BCI, Charles MacLean was a grad of the Clarkson academy and then taught there before coming to Brockport for example.


Update: a member of the society came by today and I spent an hour or so going over sources, especially the ins and outs of using NY Historic Newspapers, which, while extremely useful, is a bit clunky and not particularly user friendly.

50th anniversaries

Chemistry and Theatre are set, and were happy with what I did for them, now am working on history. They wanted scans of the department entries from the old catalogs, I showed their grad student assistant how to do the scanning, then I merged the files and just sent to them. Much more to come, especially digging for photos.

Old yearbook seekers

A couple stopped by and were hoping they could get a '64 and a '67 yearbook. I had extras and gave them copies, they were very happy to see them. They were both '67 grads; the husband was the brother of Wayne Arnold, who used to be head of local history at Rundel, I knew him when I was getting started here.

Community engagement - local history

Have been working with local history folks to craft a libguide that will have information about and links to the various webpages, finding aids I am adding to the Digital Commons etc. Just this morning I uploaded a finding aid to local history collections at the Seymour Library.

Wrestling video

'63 grad inquiring about film footage of a wrestling tournament in the mid-60s. I didn't find it unfortunately. The problem is that much of the film, video and other footage that was shot in the '60s,'70s and '80s did not survive the dissolution of the former "ECC," the Educational Communications Center. It was the big umbrella organization that held Brockport TV, AV etc., and when it was broken up into its various components in the early '90s a lot of material was just thrown out...

Class of 1918

The post in the Daily Eagle about the graduating class of a century ago, the Class of 1918, was popular, I got 5 or 6 emails about it. One was from a woman who works at the college, and her grandmother was in that class, from Pittsford. I emailed her the full class photo with her grandmother (Cecelia Kates) in it. I also mentioned that NY Historic Newspapers had a number of mentions of her grandmother in the old Fairport Herald.

"Birds eye view" of Brockport in 1880

I scanned the 1880 "aerial" or birds eye map we have of Brockport and put in DC. Had to crop slightly, posted in FB, have someone who wants to see the sliver cut off on left, will scan and send to them.